Ntando Duma is not only a great actress and TV personality, she is also a marketing genius. With the brand endorsements under her belt, and having even secured a brand deal with Cute Kids Baby Nappies for her daughter Sbahle. But it seems that this time she may have messed up big time, as she is allegedly getting sued for her business decisions.
As City Press reports, the actress is getting sued for copyright infringement. This comes after she used the photos from one brand for a campaign by another brand, which is apparently a violation of her agreement with them.
The report states that the celebrity photography agency Pixel Kollective is suing her for R200,000. She is said to have used pictures taken by them in a social media campaign for snack company Simba. As a Simba brand ambassador, she shared photos of herself with the snacks to promote the brand.
But she used pictures taken by Pixel Collective, and failed to mention the company in the posts. As such, she made three mistakes: using one brand’s product to market another, failing to credit the creators of the first product, and failing to obtain the rights to the images through proper channels if she indeed intended to use them in a manner that would not benefit Pixel Collective.
Further information is as yet unavailable on the progress of the case, and we will be sure to provide updates as they become available.
The actress is not the only celebrity to be threatened with a lawsuit in recent times. It was recently alleged that Cassper Nyovest would be sued by a car rentals agency for violating his contract with them.
It started with a lengthy social media battle between the rapper and an Instagram page that alleged that they had rented his controversial McLaren GT to him. Rumours had gone around for a while that the car was rented rather than bought by him. And as he refuted the rumours, the page came forth to ask him to bring back the car.
But the whole ordeal was very shady, especially since the page was not even reputable, had only a handful of followers, and had only been in existence for about a week before they made the bold assertions. Everyone suspected it was all faked for clout, and we are tempted to think the suspicions were right, as there has been no progress on the threatened lawsuit since.
As public figures, celebrities have to be wary of everything they say, do and post in public, lest they land in trouble with the law or fumble their bag by doing the wrong thing. Other celebrities have been sued too, though, and this is not the end of Ntando Duma’s brand partnerships, and this should be simple enough to resolve without it going too far.